


the letter delivered, the year decembered

by kyrilu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Childhood Friends, Epistolary, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Pen Pals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A twelve-year-old Tony finds a journal in his dad's things. Loki finds the counterpart in the palace library.</p><p>In which there are penpals, parallels, pictures of inventions, and predetermined endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the letter delivered, the year decembered

**Author's Note:**

> This fic owes its existence to an unused Frostiron Fest prompt and to Robert Heinlein's Time for the Stars. *hat tip* 
> 
> I've borked up the MCU timeline to make Loki and Tony's lives mesh. I also apologize for any inaccuracies, whether anachronistic or technological.

He had found the journal in his father’s suitcase by the doorway. It was filled with papers, with a set of keys, with photographs. If he had stopped for one second and scrutinized one of the papers, he would’ve caught the letters SHIELD printed resolutely on the top.  But he was just a kid, and impatiently curious, so he put aside everything else and took out the book.

The book looked old. It had a strange symbol on its cover, which Tony passed his fingers over, tracing its curves. Tony mentally ran through the languages he had seen before, whether it was from books he’d asked his mother about from her library, or maybe a street sign or pamphlet he’d seen when he accompanied his father out on his business trips, and came up blank. Maybe it was just a strange pattern, then?

He opened the book, wondering if there were more symbols inside.

But to his disappointment, the pages were blank. They were a yellowing white, crisp on its edges, and Tony decided that he liked it. He wouldn’t mind using it for himself as a notebook or something, and well, who cared whether his dad said anything about it? It was just a dumb old journal.

He found himself half-hoping that he would get caught. Tony _hated_ his dad. He hated how he saw Tony as a stupid kid, and tossed him to boring, condescending tutors that didn’t teach him shit. He could’ve learned twice as much if Howard would just let him into his workshop for a couple times.

He was Tony Stark. He’d built his first circuit board eight years ago and first engine five years ago. He knew that he was going places.

Tony slipped the journal underneath his jacket, carefully rearranged his dad’s suitcase, and went down to his room.

* * *

 

He forgot about the journal for nearly a week. His dad’s friend and business partner Obie was constantly visiting, and Tony got himself caught up in entertaining him. Obie was an uncle to him, and he always gave Tony neat power tools for his birthday or for Christmas. He didn’t mind listening when Tony told him about his ideas.

This was going to be big. Last year IBM had released their PC, and it had caught on like wildfire. It had actually took his dad by surprise—he had been standing with Apple, tut-tutting, while simultaneously being busy with his usual top-secret government work. But now Tony knew that there was talk of Stark Enterprises producing their own computer line, but obviously, for advanced military type of stuff. (He wasn’t supposed to know this. But he had _ears_ during dinner while Obie and Howard were discussing business.)

The industry was expanding, everyone scrambling to make their own PCs to replicate IBM’s success; the technology was improving. There’d been microcomputers released before—take the Trinity, which came out when he was seven, and its successors—but this was _interesting_. Tony wanted to know where it would go—he’d dissected his own brand new PC, and was in the process of tinkering with it, here and there.

That night, he stretched out on his bed, staring at the old toy glow-in-the-dark stars on the wall, thinking hard. He shifted a little, and his hand brushed against the journal, tucked underneath a blanket layer.

Tony dug it out. He opened to the first page, took a pencil from his desk, and started drawing.

Soon, the paper was covered with a rough sketch of a computer parts. The circuit boards that Tony had usually planned out used thru-hole technology, because that was what was usually used, but this one was a mix of thru-hole and planar. IBM had showed off the latter two decades back or so, and it was pretty interesting--Tony reached for a book on his shelf, flicked through the blueprints. If you use both technologies, you're going to have to solder the parts together, but it was definitely more efficient than just using thru-hole.

Tony carefully scribbled out the model: where to drill, where to mount. The only noise in his room was the sound of his pencil scratching on paper. It was a comfortable process, a familiar one, and he thought distantly that it might be too difficult and demanding to obtain custom made parts that would fit his blueprint, even if his family was richer than God. He would have to see if he could find already existing parts and make some modifications.

He felt himself wavering in and out of sleep; he didn't know how long he had been sitting at his desk, erasing mistakes, cross-referencing parts. He often fell asleep there, after all, his head buried in papers, his hand smudged with gray.

So he didn't expect to wake up to a stranger's handwriting in the journal.

Tony rubbed his eyes. Squinted. It was early in the morning sometime, he didn't bother to look at the clock, and the writing was still _there._ That wasn't right. The book had been completely blank, except for the diagrams Tony had drawn, and now, there was a filled-up page.

Invisible ink? Some crazy Cold War shit, because this was something he'd found in his father's suitcase? He hadn’t stuck it under UV light or poured any chemicals on it, though…

It read:

 _I am writing in a messenger journal_. _I believe that you’ve found its counterpart. I found this book in the recesses of a library--your book should have a rune on its cover, a rune that means_ stars. _My mother tells me that it’s a rune that means connection and memory. (If you’re in Vanaheim, you might not know that Asgardians have a tradition where those that are deceased are set to the stars.)_

_Please treat your book carefully, because it’s historically significant. Military leaders in our ships used to use these during wartime or exploration, to communicate back to Asgard. I think this was used during war, which is why you’re most likely Vanir. Or you might be an Aesir–was yours from a library as well?_

_Have you been able to access the journal’s database? Some texts I’ve read say that the records of wartime/exploration should be preserved in the journals somewhere, but I haven’t been able to activate them. It probably hides the records because there’s different users writing in it now, if there’s anything that was supposed to be confidential. I would like to read them, but I haven’t any success yet, even with my mother’s assistance._

_Does your journal connect to any other journals?_

_What are you drawing?_

_-L.O._

Tony frowned. The words were certainly in English, but he hadn’t a clue what they meant. Were they codenames? He’d never heard of a place called Vanaheim or Asgard, or people called Asgardian, or Aesir, or Vanir.

The passage had described the journal like it was some sort of communicator, a walkie-talkie device. Tony moved his fingers along the journal’s binding, but there were no wires, no evidence of a circuit board or battery or anything. This wasn’t the type of thing people used in _ships_.

Was it a prank or something?

His pencil poised over the journal, Tony wrote back:

_Is this a joke? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t like being messed with. I have no idea why I’m writing back. This is crazy. This might be an old message planted by Soviet spies that my dad unearthed somewhere, maybe the ink got exposed to oxygen long enough._

_I found this book in my father’s suitcase. He works for the government and has his own company. And this journal isn’t a computer, genius. There’s no database. It’s just blank besides my writing and yours._

_Vanaheim, Asgard, Vanir. What does that mean?_

_I’m drawing a blueprint of a PC. I’m going to be an engineer and get my dad’s company. I know my stuff._

_-T.S._

Tony nearly started in shock when he saw letters coming out of nowhere, printed below his response. It was in the same small, neat handwriting that was on the previous page. Black ink curling over the white quickly.

He was fifty percent sure that this wasn’t a dream.

 _You’re in Midgard,_ it said, simply. More mysterious codenames.

 _Earth,_ Tony corrected. _North America, the United States, New York, my family mansion._

 _I don’t understand how the journal could have ended up in Midgard,_ L.O. wrote. _You call it Earth, but we call it Midgard._

Tony wrote: _What?_

 _It’s hard to explain,_ L.O. scrawled back. _None of you mortals have had any real contact with us, with any of the other realms, in centuries. I might get in trouble if they know I’m writing to you._

‘Realm’? ‘Mortals’? Very high fantasy.

 _Someone’s read too much Tolkien_. _Does Frodo live, LO? I don’t get what you’re going on about, and frankly, this journal thing isn’t even possible. There’s no damn wires in this thing, no antennae, no nothing. –T.S._

_I told you earlier: the rune on the front. It is magic—antiquated, old magic, but magic nevertheless. Your people haven’t discovered magic, but mine have. This isn’t a jest. Asgard is real as much as Midgard is. We have our home among the stars, around our sun, like you do. (What is a PC? Your design looks very intricate.)—L.O._

_Thanks. Personal Computer. AKA a microcomputer AKA a home computer. And…you think you’re an alien.—T.S._

He didn’t get a reply after that.

Tony sank into his chair. Did that really happen? He looked down at the journal.

Yeah. It happened.

His thoughts were disrupted by a knock on the door. He recognized the rhythm of it: two long taps, not too loud and not too firm.

“Come in,” he said.

It was Jarvis, bearing a tray of cookies. “You’re still awake, sir.” He sounded slightly disapproving, as always, his face set in ancient worry lines in the dim light. But there was a fondness there, too—he had cookies with him, after all.

“I was working on a project of mine,” Tony said, reaching to take a cookie. It was chocolate chip, crunchy and warm. He grinned up at Jarvis. “I’m making good progress.”

“Good luck,” Jarvis said. He took a cookie for himself, gave Tony a small smile, and then left him with the tray. “You should get some sleep, sir. Your tutors aren’t very pleased when you sleep through their lessons.”

Tony shrugged. So? He knew that MIT would take him anyway, who cared if he slept through boring lessons. He knew that it was the things that he built now that mattered. Showed that he was a prodigy you couldn’t say no to. Newspapers mentioned him a lot: for participating in _this_ math and science camp, for winning _this_ invention competition, for cooperating in _that_ project with the nation’s other best and brightest children.

Jarvis saw the look on Tony’s face and said gently, “You can’t continue your project if you keep falling asleep, sir.”

He didn’t push any farther. He left the room, and Tony sighed, stifled a yawn. Jarvis was right, that old bastard.

Tony went to bed without changing out of yesterday’s clothes. He tucked the journal back into the bedcovers, and fell asleep still looking at the glow and the dark stars on the ceiling.

(Alien, huh?)

* * *

 

We have mechanisms in Asgard like your personal computer. They’re more advanced, however, woven with runes in its insides and running on a different power source. I’ve copied an outline of a device that we use here on the subsequent page, if you would like to see.

It is proof, T.S. I know that you might not yet believe me, but I would like to write to you regardless. I want to continue using these messenger journals because they’re a fascinating piece of my realm’s history—I’ve been questioning former warriors and they’ve confirmed that these journals are indeed dated back to our war with Vanaheim.

I would like to recover the records I mentioned, and I think I’ll have to do that with your help. Descriptions of battles seem like they would be something that would draw my brother, but I would honestly like to know everything about these journals. Maybe the users recorded magic that the Vanir used; maybe a warrior did lead an expedition sometime, and there are observations of undiscovered realms beyond Yggdrasil.

And there’s the obvious question on how your journal ended up on Midgard. There’s no plausible explanation how that happened—there was only one war of ours that intersected with your realm, and that war predated messenger journals. We have never sent expeditions to Midgard, either.

-L.O.

* * *

 

Someone’s the chatty historian, isn’t he? (‘He’, right? I’m a guy, if you were wondering. Although a lot of people think that I’m a snot nosed bratty kid, apparently.)

Emphasis on ‘historian’, too, because no, I don’t believe you. We can call your made-up fantasy ‘history’ if it makes you happy. I’m still looking for those wires.

I’ve never seen anything like that blueprint before. It doesn’t look like a real invention—I can see something that might be the PCB, resistors, maybe inductors, but that doesn’t look copper? It looks similar to a computer, though, I grant you that. But I still have no idea what you’re talking about when you go on about runes and magic. If you want me to try and take you seriously, you’re going to have to explain.

I don’t mind writing to you. I don’t know if your records will materialize or not, reality vs. imagination, etc., etc., but good luck anyway.

-T.S.

P.S. What’s your name? At least your first one, anyway. I’m Tony.

 

 


End file.
